11/10/2020
PROBLEMS, MY SUREST WAY TO SUCCESS
“If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give off your best effort, eventually
you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges”- PATRILEY
“When you do the common things of life in an uncommon way you will command the
attention of the world”- GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
I have observed great people, read about them, studied their lives and the one thing I have
found about this people is the fact that they were all problem solvers. Problem is the fastest
route to a life of significance. He who runs away from problem runs away from his relevance.
Every human being on this planet has been designed to solve a particular problem whiles on
earth. Your greatest task is to find that problem you were born to solve and give yourself
wholeheartedly to it.
Our country has real problems. Someone somewhere this very moment is dying of hunger. Some are homeless. Some villages have no schools and even the ones that do, lack adequate infrastructures. As I write these words, a female child somewhere in this country is forced into an early marriage. Someone elsewhere is abusing a substance. Our local TV stations every now and then brings to our attention the severity of the problems we have in our country. We get mad when we hear such news. We complain about how our leaders have
failed us when we watch the news. We hit social media with our harsh criticism for some few
days and then we forget about the problem. You see there is nothing wrong with any of
these things. But more important than our complaining and shouting is what we do to solve these problems. I always say as Ghanaians as we are, we prefer to discuss the magnitude and severity of the daunting problems we face than to discuss the plans to solve them. That got to change. We carry the success of our generation and we cannot disappoint them.
This is to bring to our knowledge the men and
women who through intentional living have solved the problems of their day and left their
footprint in the sands of history. This is not your regular list of people. I specifically picked
these individuals for a particular reason. They had no special advantage. They did not have
two heads, neither were they born into billions. They were people just like us. But through
intentional living they changed the course of history. As we go through their lives, I want you
to pay attention to key details of their lives. My hope is that our lives will be touched and
transformed by their stories.
HELEN KELLER
The first individual I want us to look at is Helen Keller. Helen Keller was an American author,
political activist, and a lecturer. She became deaf and blind at a very young age and had to
struggle to overcome her disabilities. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a
Bachelor of Arts degree. She became a campaigner for deaf and blind charities. By virtue of her achievement, she has helped destigmatize blindness and deafness. She has shown us that we can live beyond our needs and become a solution to others. She became hope and inspiration to many people living with similar impediment. She gave her life up despite her disabilities and became a beacon of hope to many around the world. If a woman deaf and
blind can become a source of inspiration to many then what is stopping you and me? She had a problem yet she did not allow her problems dictate the direction of her life. Instead she used the problem as a steppingstone to a life of significance.
MALALA YOUSAFZAI
‘’I don’t want to be thought of as the girl who was shot by the Taliban but the girl who fought
for education. This is the cause to which I want to devote my life”- Malala Yousafzai
Born 12 July 1997 in Swat district of northwest Pakistan. Malala is a Pakistani activist for
female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is a human right advocate,
especially the education of women and children in her district, where the local Pakistani
Taliban had banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has become an international
movement, and according to a former prime minister, she has become “the most
prominent citizen of the country” The journey to all these achievements was not an easy one.
As a young girl Malala defied the orders of the Taliban in her district and demanded that girls
be allowed to go to school. On the 9th of October 2012, while returning home she was shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; but survived and went on to receive the Noble Peace Prize. Following her recovery, Malala became a prominent activist for the right to education. She co-founded the Malala fund, a
non-profit organization with Shiza Shahid that provides funding towards the education of the
girl child. In 2013, she co-authored “I am Malala” an international bestseller. She has
received a lot of awards. Time magazine featured her as one of the most influential people on the planet in their 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues.
You know the most amazing thing about this personality? She achieved all these amazing
things as a teenager.
Make no mistake about this, problems will always be our surest way to
a life of significance. If Malala can, why can’t we? I would like to end the story of Malala with
one of my favorite quote from her.
“I told myself, Malala, you have already faced death. This is your second life. Don’t be afraid-
if you are afraid, you can’t move forward.---Malala Yousafzai
I can go on and on with the stories. Is it the story of my very own bill gates, or Henry ford,
Mark Zuckerberg, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, or our very own Kwame Nkrumah, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther king Jr, or George Washington Carver- the man regarded as the most prominent scientist of his time?The list goes on and on. Each of these people have their own unique stories but one fact remains the same; they were all problem solvers. But more than just problem solvers, they solved problems I believe they were meant to solve.
Your passion, talents and gifts determine the problem you were called to solve. A bird was
designed to fly so the Creator in his wisdom gave it wings. A fish was designed to swim
hence it's design and gifts. Most often we try to solve problems we are not called to solve.
Our inability to identify the problems we were born to solve makes life very difficult for us.
Some of you are called to feed the nation but are wearing three piece suit sitting in some
office and watching your destiny go bankrupt. Some of you are called to be politicians to lead this nation but are hiding in some small corner doing something else and making life very difficult for yourselves. Some of you are called to be great footballers or win the world cup for our nation but are missing inaction. Why? Because you are running a race no one has called you to run. Fighting a fight you have no business fighting .Some of you have sold 40 years of your life to a job for something called salary whereas God gave you the job as a steppingstone to build your own conglomerate and solve the unemployment problem we have in this country. I hope you realize you are also contributing to the unemployment problem we have in this continent?
I grew up in an environment where all that is required to be a success is to go to school, get a
good job,marry a good wife, give birth, build two houses, one for your parents and one for
your immediate family add some cars and you are good to go. But then, I discovered for
myself that life is more than getting married and giving birth and going after all that mundane material possessions. I discovered my life is more than that. I was born to make an impact. I was born to solve a particular problem in my generation. The happiest day of my entire life was the day I discovered what problem I was born to solve. You were born for impact. You were born to solve the daunting problems of the continent. Always remember that whatever God requires HE provides for. Whatever you are called to do, do it wholeheartedly.
Martin Luther king Jr. captured it well when he said “If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or
Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and
earth will pause to say ‘here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
